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Victoria Anna Schuele Holm – My Grandmother

Victoria Anna Schuele, second oldest of the four children of Anton Schuele and Maria Crescentia Ohnsorg was born October 26, 1887 in Chaska, Minnesota and lived originally in Laketown, Minnesota. By the end of 1890 all three of her siblings perished to fever and in 1892 her father, Anton died of tuberculosis. In 1893 she and her mother moved to Chaska and lived in a small apartment.

In 1896, her mother married John Lawrence Schug, a widower who lived in Cologne, Minnesota. John’s first wife died from complication of her fifth childbirth in 1894, leaving 4 children under the age of 8. Victoria would become the eldest child in the household. Victoria’s mother had 11 more children with John and died four days after an unsuccessful delivery in April 1911. Victoria (aka Dora) played a substantial role in caring for the 15 members of the combined family.

Victoria met and married John Holm in Fingal, North Dakota. Victoria originally came to work as a kitchen helper on her step-father’s first cousin’s farm (Katherine Annie Ranft Holm). John and Victoria farmed near Cuba, North Dakota until John’s death in 1951. Victoria and John had five children; Dorothy (Arthur) Storbeck, Lucille (Jim) Kunze, Clarence Holm, Evelyn (Kenneth) Grant, and Walter (Orlys) Holm.

Victoria lived on the farm until the last few years of her life, when she moved to an apartment in Valley City, North Dakota. She passed away in 1972 and was laid to rest with her husband in the St. Catherine’s Cemetery in Valley City, ND.